Wednesday, March 14, 2018

THE OLD GENERATION HOBBY SELLERS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE NEW GENERATION!

Sorry I haven't been able to update in awhile. It's been an insane 6-months for me. First I have a new physical disability to deal with: the four Massively Herniated Discs in my neck (C3-C7) have now caused permanent nerve damage (multiple pinched nerves) to my entire right shoulder area (from my neck to my entire right shoulder DEEPLY & all the way down my trapezius muscle on the right (severe non-stop pain from my right elbow up and around to the top quarter of my right back area). I had an "attack" of this same area in 2012 that lasted a few days or so, but it went away. Now it hasn't stopped for 6-months. When you are on any pain medication for MANY years for a very specific pain, it won't help a new pain which is what happened with my right shoulder area. At least I'm a lefty! Plus now I'm taking 800mg Ibuprofen a few times a day which helps my shoulder area slightly.

Then on 12/1/18 my step-mother must have found a new shoulder to cry on (she's been calling me EVERY DAY for over 18-months to complain OVER & OVER about her piddy little problems as compared to my major ones) and I just had to bear it because she said my father made her promise that she'd send me $500 a month INDEFINITELY, that on 12/1/18 to changed to "The checks I was sending are ending this March!". WHAT A SELFISH WITCH! She knows I'm barely making it as kit is even with the money she was sending, and she's cutting me off after all I did to FINANCIALLY HELP my father in my life! He lost any possibility of a job in 1999, because to be blunt; he was not educated. The jobs he had a trucking company terminal managers relied more on him being a super nice guy than actually doing any work. I know this because I worked with him (for free) for a few months when I was 18. I knew how to do his entire job in less than 3-days!!!

So in 1990, I got him interested in Sports Cards and taught him everything I knew. Then when I first got on eBay, I tried to teach him that too but he was too dumb to work a computer (he was only 60 at the time) and MANY 60-year olds learned to master computer & eBay use! So he tried to pawn all the eBay work off on my step-mother (that she keeps complaining to me about)like that's my fault??? So instead my father started selling MUHAMMAD ALI forgeries behind my back with my step-mother for the infamous North NJ forgery seller JOHN OLSEN and CHUCK WEPNER (as John's Authenticity of the ALI autographs and every one of them were FORGERIES!!!). This disgusted me, because by 1999 I became a Forensic Document Examiner ONLY FOR FREE to rid the hobby of as many forgeries as possible, meanwhile my own father ignored my warnings to report him to the FBI TWICE and was still selling Muhammad Ali forgeries until at least 2010! My father moved from NJ to MI in 2002, so I had not seen him one until I saw him in his COFFIN in 2015! He was the definition of "ABSENTEE FATHER"! But I had such a need for one semi-normal parent that I accepted my father with all his faults (and once he died and my step-mother started spilling her guts; I learned what a selfish piece of crap he truly was!).
He abandoned me with my mentally ill mother when I was 18-months old and I was lucky if he came to see me (5) times until I was 14-years old and was made to travel by myself by bus, two trains and a NJ Transit bus at Times Square in Manhattan when it was at ITS WORST (like it looked when Robert De Niro filmed Taxi Driver) with a drug dealer or pimp on every corner and homeless people all over the place in the NY/NJ Transit building. I'm lucky I never got killed or raped in that place!

Anyway I finally got my Medicaid benefits (Medicare Savings Program that fully pays for Medicare Part B) back that I WRONGLY LOST just a week before my step-mother cut me off FOREVER! She gave her two nephews all of my father's valuables that my father always promised me! I never even knew these nephews existed until my father died??? My step-mother USED ME, and dumped me in the dirt... but this is nothing new for how my entire family treated me in my whole life. Maybe this is why it was so easy for me to get over my mentally ill mother becoming catatonic (and put into a Nursing Home by the state since she put my name on NOTHING!) and my father's death just 7-months later. I learned to count on no one but myself at a very young age which is no way to live, BUT I HAD NO CHOICE THEN. Now that I have a choice, I'm happy those scum are out of my life to be brutally honest and I GLAD to be living alone since 2014.

BACK TO THE HOBBY!

eBay is even worse than ever AGAIN! I know I've said this before, but now eBay outright LIES to people who call to complain about sellers of illegal reprint cards (covered by current copyright laws) and only if you get the owners of the copyright laws to threaten eBay; eBay lets the sales of illegal items run forever!

I got most of the vintage Topps quality copies of vintage Topps cards OFF OF EBAY WHICH WAS A LONG HARD FIGHT FOR ME! No novice collector could tell the difference with these reprints even if holding a REAL common in one hand, and the expensive reprint in the other hand!!! What most people don't realize is there are THOUSANDS of small print shops in this country that will copy anything for the right price! And not just copy, but make sure the card stock is right, the dot matrix printing is right, and the light gloss is right as well ONLY on the front! I know because I WASTED $20.00 of my own money to see just how good these reprints were and I WAS SHOCKED INTO ACTION!
I had to contact each card company that had the copyright, and every card licensor: the Player's Associations, Properties, and the sport itself. Then I had to explain how badly it would HURT THEM ior they never would have done anything! It's insane when I think how hard I have to fight FOR FREE (asc sick as I am) when these jerks are getting PAID lots oF money to NOT DO THEIR JOBS!!!

Then after several quiet months, suddenly there were like TEN sellers of the early 1990's ILLEGAL Black & White REPRINTS of the 1989 Fleer BILL RIPKEN Fluck Face "ERROR". A few of these sellers stated "QUANTITIES AVAILABLE". So once again I went to work to rid eBay of these cards! But Upper Deck doesn't seem to care that people are reprinting that Fluck Face card even though they own the licensing rights to reproduce that card (AND ONLY THEM)! I did get all the honest sellers to stop selling those cards on eBay, so (4) sellers removed them...

Then today I out of curiosity wanted to see how FULL TIME EBAY SELLERS were listing the 1999 Playoff Momentum Jersey cards. These ARE NOT game-used cards, and Playoff even issued a Press Release to Beckett (back when there was some honor left in the hobby) clearing up that Playoff MADE A MISTAKE by making those cards just when game-used cards were getting EXTREMELY POPULAR (why I'll never know!). I ALWAYS HATED GAME-USED CARDS BECAUSE THEY WAS WAY TOO MUCH FREEDOM FOR CARD COMPANIES TO CHEAT AND NO WAY FOR ANYONE TO PROVE IT (unless you were me). If you recall, I was the person who found out that Pacific Trading Cards used ALL FAKE jerseys and bats in their first fully licensed baseball product (that Pacific's owner Mike Cramer was fighting to get since the 1980's). I pulled a Mark McGwire Jersey card from Private Stock and had a Hideo Nomo jersey card too. So I wanted Pacific to send me copies of thew Letters Of Authenticity that come with nearly all REAL game-used items. I was tossed around like a baseball (pun intended) from one Pacific Executive to another (like 8 of them) and a couple of their Legal Dept. employees tro. The lame excuse I got the most often was "How do we know you won't use the letter for a fake item.". So I quickly came up with the solution: use Windows Paint to shrink the LOA to a specific size in pixels (that ONLY Pacific would know) AND put the Pacific watermark (like they used on their redemption cards) all over the copied LOA! THEY STILL REFUSED TO SEND ME COPIES??? So then I sent all my tape recorded conversations with Pacific employees to the MLB Players Association, MLB Properties, and the MLB itself. In less than a month Pacific LOST ALL THEIR BASEBALL LICENSING!

100% FAKE GU JERSEYS/BATS in 2001 PS BB! Pacific ADMITTED IT TO THE MLBPA! How many (if not all) of Pacific GU items were FAKE???I truly wish I could have been allowed to speak to Mike Cramer about this from the very start because the last thing I wanted was to hurt Mike Cramer. I knew he was a lifelong hobbyist and sports photographer (even for his own company's cards). So I wanted to find that some of his Executives were using these FAKE items behind Mike's back. This way things would have turned out FAR differently and Mike Cramer might still be successful in this hobby. But instead he fell off the planet when Pacific went bankrupt in 2004 due to losing all the money they invested in the non-refundable baseball licensing fees.

NOT ONE OF THE ABOVE 1999 PLAYOFF MOMENTUM JERSEY CARDS ARE GAME-USED, NOR ARE ANY IN THAT SET!!!

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I was contacted by a person I knew about from www.waxmorgue.com and who's site I liked when it used to be up some 4-years ago. But he gave up for those 4-years and now gladly he's back and so will be his website. He interviewed me for 3-hours on the phone about my hobby history and he said hobbyists should know what I've done for the hobby. I see it as an opportunity to HELP the new generation of hobbyists that never had Price Guides to educate them! I had FOUR different Price Guides to learn bits and pieces from over a long period (1987-2005). But younger collectors age 20-30 had NO ONE to learn the hobby's past from. I offered by putting my REAL email as many places online as I could.
However people need to understand that I'm very physically disabled! I spent all of 2011 and 2012 in a wheelchair which I decided to get myself out of or I knew I'd never walk again if I didn't. So even though I'm NEVER supposed to increase my daily physical activity (due to my Myasthenia Gravis) I pushed it far beyond where I should have. But I got out of that wheelchair and NEVER got back in it!

Topps and Panini Customer Service is worse than they've ever been in all areas. I constantly hear horror stories about Panini, but I rarely buy their products because they make SO MANY sticker autographs that I TRULY HATE WITH A BURNING PASSION. Unless there's an autograph I REALLY WANT and only sticker Certified Autos are available: then I'll rarely buy a sticker autograph like of HENRY HILL from Goodfellas which occurred and was filmed in the whole area I grew up in!

I'm still legally homebound and mostly bedridden and never leave my basement room except to go to Pain Management every month (which became mandatory by the DEA to stop the "Opioid War" (which HARMS more truly sick people than helps addicts!!!). I have better solutions to the Opiate problem in this country but the DEA listens to NO ONE- trust me I tried writing them letters up to TEN YEARS AGO that they ignored! If I must I can't walk two city blocks. It wreaks havoc on my whole body because my muscle cells don't regenerate, once they die they are gone for good. So I need to keep my activity of all kinds in a regimented amount. Talking, holding a phone, standing in one spot, or sitting in one spot for more than 15-minutes all increase my pain greatly and kill muscle cells I'll never get back. So I need to be VERY CAREFUL which is very hard for anyone to truly understand. It took me over 5-years to get all of this to fully sink in myself.

I'm always here for all collectors. So if you have hobby questions, feel free to ask me and you're likely to learn far more than you ever expected as my responses tend to be "long-winded". :) cardcop04@gmail.com

ALWAYS ON YOUR SIDE (unlike T.J. Schwartz who was only ever on his backside!).

About Me

I have always fought for others that could not fight for themselves since childhood and did charity work since I was 12-years old or so which I never stopped doing. I gravitated towards this likely because I wanted to be as much UNLIKE my mother as I saw how much she hurt those who loved her the most (her parents, her husband, them me). My mom was my only parent since age 2, and she suffered from mental illness (Sociopath-Narcissist, Manic-Depression, pathological lying, gambling addiction+++) ever since I can remember & HATED anyone who tried to get her help (especially me).
No matter what obstacles you may have to face in life, that's no excuse to DO THE WRONG THING! I have more problems than most of you ever had nightmares about and not only do I not do the WRONG things, I do as much as I can for sick children and those collectors I can help in this hobby always for free and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I've been very physically disabled since late 2001 at age 34, which continues to get worse every year. I've been on SSD since 2006 & am terminally ill.